Research

Looking for a way to stay mentally sharp as you age? Here’s a clue: puzzles.

There is no single test available to diagnose Alzheimer’s. Instead, physicians rely on several diagnostic tools and medical criteria to ascertain whether a person may be suffering from the disease. Unfortunately, the most widely recognized diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s are inconclusive, at best. And while neurologists and geriatricians can usually tell if a patient is suffering from dementia, figuring out its cause is challenging, and may lead to a false Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

Tau protein tangles (or neurofibrillary tangles) are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, but what role do they play? First, you need to understand how a disease like Alzheimer’s spread across the brain. Degenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other dementias are “prion-like,” meaning they happen because proteins in the brain misfold and change their structure. Once one protein misfolds, the same process can spread to other parts of the brain, causing many cells to misfold. That results in what we call tau tangles. 

When Tatiana Lagos’s father stopped driving, she didn’t think much of it at first.

In a waiting room at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, a 74-year-old woman named Rubie is about to find out whether she has a gene that puts her at risk for Alzheimer's.